Don't know if I can claim a patent on this clanger. But haven't seen this question asked/answered before.
Last month I upgraded from Kanotix-Jan-2006 to the latest (October). The live disk built the new installation around my old /home.
And it's a beaut; for that matter, so was the Jan-2006 one. Thanks a LOT, Kano.

Aber... my old root account in /home didn't survive the move. It's gone.
My one user account works *perfectly*.
Only complaint is I can't get to my apps as root when I want to. Couldn't get into K3b as root today, for example.
Switching to root in Konsole works fine; but won't open K3b.
I use K3b only as an example, the problem is general.

Now I'm in the process of moving to a (moderately) better computer using the October edition- again, wrapping it around my old /home. I'll copy /home to CD, and move it that way.
Probably, as soon as everything is right on the new machine, I'll replace the setup on my current rig with... Etch (?)
How to most simply set up correctly on my new machine? Do a fresh install, following which I paste my old /home user account in? Or? And the /home root account: how to restore it ?
One hopes these questions make sense: it isn't easy being (permanently) green.
But Kanotix makes it a lot of fun !
TIA,
Grady